Ferraro grew up in New
York and became a teacher and lawyer. She joined the Queens CountyDistrict Attorney's
Office in 1974, where she headed the new Special Victims Bureau
that dealt with sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence. She
was elected to Congress in 1978, where she rose rapidly in the
party hierarchy while focusing on legislation to bring equity for
women in the areas of wages, pensions, and retirement plans. In
1984, former Vice President and presidential candidate Walter Mondale
selected Ferraro to be his running mate in the upcoming election. In doing so she became
the only Italian American to be a major-party
national nominee in addition to being the first woman. The positive
polling the Mondale-Ferarro ticket received when she joined it
faded as questions arose about the finances of her and her husband.
In the general election, Mondale and Ferraro were defeated in a
landslide by incumbent PresidentRonald Reagan and
Vice President George H. W. Bush.

Early
life and education

Ferraro lived in this house in Newburgh until she was ten.

Ferraro was born in Newburgh, New
York,[1]
the daughter of Antonetta L. (née Corrieri), a
first-generation Italian American seamstress, and
Dominick Ferraro, an Italian immigrant and owner of two
restaurants.[2][3][4]
Geraldine had three older brothers, two of whom died early in life
– one in infancy and one at age three.[4]
She attended the parochial school Mount Saint Mary's in Newburgh
when she was young,[5] but
Geraldine's father died of a heart attack in May 1944 when she was
eight.[6]
Geraldine's mother soon invested and lost the remainder of the
family's money, forcing the family to move to a low income area in
the South Bronx while Geraldine's mother worked
in the garment industry to support them.[1][4][7]

Geraldine stayed on at Mount Saint Mary's as a boarder for a
while, then briefly went to parochial school in the South
Bronx.[8]
Beginning in 1947, Ferraro attended and lived at the parochial
Marymount Academy in Tarrytown, New York, using income
from a family rental property in Italy and skipping seventh
grade.[8][9]
At Marymount she was a member of the honor society, active in several clubs
and sports, and voted most likely to succeed;[4]
she graduated in 1952.[10]
Her mother was adamant that she get a full education,[11]
despite an uncle in the family saying "Why bother? She's pretty.
She's a girl. She'll get married."[12]
Ferraro attended Marymount Manhattan College
with a scholarship[4]
while sometimes holding two or three jobs at the same time.[13]
During her senior year she began dating John Zaccaro of Forest
Hills, Queens, who had graduated from Iona College with a commission
in the U.S. Marine Corps.[14]
Ferraro received a Bachelor of Arts in English in
1956;[7]
she was the first woman in her family to gain a college degree.[14]
She also passed the city exam to become a licensed school teacher.[14]

Family, lawyer,
prosecutor

Ferraro became engaged to Zaccaro in August 1959[9]
and married him on July 16, 1960.[18]
He became a realtor and businessman.[7]
She kept her birth name professionally, as a way to honor her
mother for having supported the family after her father's
death,[1][2]
but used his name in parts of her private life.[19] The
couple has three children, Donna (born 1962), John Jr. (born 1964),
and Laura (born 1966).[18]
They lived in Forest Hills Gardens,
Queens, and in 1971 added a vacation house in Saltaire
on Fire Island.[20][21] They
would buy a condominium in Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1983.[20][22]

While raising the children, Ferraro worked part-time as a civil lawyer in her
husband's real estate firm for
13 years.[16]
She also occasionally worked for other clients and did some pro bono
work for women in family court.[23][24] She
spent time at local Democratic clubs, which allowed her to maintain
contacts within the legal profession and become involved in local
politics and campaigns.[23]
In 1970, she was elected president of the Queens County Women's Bar
Association.[25][26]

Ferraro's first full-time political job came in January 1974
when she was appointed Assistant District Attorney for Queens County, New York[27]
by her cousin, District Attorney Nicholas Ferraro.[16]
At the time, women prosecutors in the city were uncommon.[16]
Grumblings that she was the beneficiary of nepotism were countered by her being rated as
qualified by a screening committee and by her early job performance
in the Investigations Bureau.[16]
The following year, Ferraro was assigned to the new Special Victims
Bureau, which prosecuted cases involving rape, child abuse, spouse
abuse, and domestic violence.[16][27]
She was named head of the unit in 1977, with two other assistant
district attorneys assigned to her.[16]
In this role, she became a strong advocate for abused children.[27]
She was admitted to the U.S.
Supreme Court Bar in 1978.[26]

As part of the D.A. office, Ferraro worked long hours, and
gained a reputation for being a tough prosecutor but fair in plea
negotiations.[16]
Although her unit was supposed to turn cases over for court
handling, she conducted some trials herself, and juries were
persuaded by the summations she gave.[16]
Ferraro was upset to discover that her superior was paying her less
than equivalent male colleagues because she was a married woman and
already had a husband.[23]
Moreover, Ferraro found the nature of the cases she dealt with
debilitating;[1]
the work left her "drained and angry" and she developed an ulcer.[28] She
grew frustrated that she was unable to deal with root causes, and
talked about running for legislative office.[16]

House
of Representatives

Ferraro ran for election to the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 9th Congressional District in
Queens in 1978, after longtime Democratic incumbent James Delaney
announced his retirement.[29]
The location for the television series All in the
Family, the district was known for its ethnic composition
and conservative views.[1]
In a three-candidate primary race for the Democratic nomination,
Ferraro faced two better-known rivals,[29]
including the party organization candidate, City
CouncilmanThomas J. Manton.[30] Her
main issues were law and order, support for the elderly, and
neighborhood preservation.[23]
She labeled herself a "'small c' conservative"[1]
and emphasized that she was not a bleeding-heart liberal; her
campaign slogan was "Finally, A Tough Democrat".[31]
Her Italian heritage also appealed to ethnic residents in the
district.[23]
She won the three-way primary with 53 percent of the vote, and
then captured the general election as well, defeating Republican Alfred A.
DelliBovi by a 10 percentage point margin in a contest in
which dealing with crime was the major issue and personal attacks
by DelliBovi were frequent.[23][29]
She had been aided by some $130,000 in campaign funds from her own
family, including $110,000 in loans from Zaccaro.[32]
The source and nature of these transactions were declared illegal
by the Federal Election Commission
shortly before the primary, causing Ferraro to pay back the loans
in October 1978 via several real estate transactions.[32]
In 1979, the campaign and Zaccaro paid $750 in fines for civil
violations of election law.[32]

Ferraro and her family lived in this house in Forest Hills Gardens,
Queens during her time in the House, her vice-presidential
campaign, and until the early 2000s.

Ferraro was active in Democratic presidential politics as well.
She served as one of the deputy chairs for the 1980
Carter-Mondale campaign.[12][33]
Following the election, she served actively on the Hunt Commission that in 1982
rewrote the Democratic delegate selection rules; Ferraro was
credited as having been the prime agent behind the creation of superdelegates.[33]
By 1983 she was regarded as one of the up-and-coming stars of the
party.[12][38]
She was the Chairwoman of the Platform Committee for the 1984 Democratic
National Convention, the first woman to hold that position.[7]
There she held multiple hearings around the country and further
gained in visibility.[1]

While in Congress, Ferraro focussed much of her legislative
attention on equity for women in the areas of wages, pensions, and
retirement plans.[27]
She was a cosponsor of the 1981 Economic Equity Act.[27]
On the House
Select Committee on Aging, she concentrated on the problems of
elderly women.[27]
In 1984, she championed a pension equity law revision that would
improve the benefits of people who left work for long periods and
then returned, a typical case for women with families.[39]
The Reagan administration, at first lukewarm to the measure,
decided to sign it to gain the benefits of its popular appeal.[39]

As with many representatives, Ferraro issued regular newsletters to
her constituents.

Ferraro also worked on some environmental issues. During 1980,
she tried to prevent the federal government from gaining the power
to override local laws on hazardous
materials transportation, an effort she continued in subsequent
years.[40][41] In
August 1984, she led passage of a Superfund renewal bill and attacked the
Reagan administration's handling of environmental site
cleanups.[42]

Ferraro took a congressional trip to Nicaragua at the start of 1984, where she
spoke to the Contras.[43]
She decided that the Reagan Administration's
military interventions there and in El Salvador were counterproductive towards
reaching U.S. security goals, and that regional negotiations would
be better.[43]

While in the House, Ferraro's political self-description evolved
to "moderate".[1]
In 1982, she said her experiences as assistant district attorney
had changed some of her views: "... because no matter how concerned
I am about spending, I have seen first hand what poverty can do to
people's lives and I just can't, in good conscience, not do
something about it."[16]
For her six years in Congress, Ferraro had an average
78 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic
Action[45] and
an average 8 percent rating from the American Conservative
Union.[46] The
AFL-CIO's Committee on
Political Education gave her an average approval rating of
91 percent.[37]

Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro to be his Vice-Presidential
candidate on July 12, 1984, and Ferraro stated, "I am absolutely
thrilled."[50]
The Mondale campaign wagered that her selection would shake up a
race in which he was a decided underdog; in addition to attracting
women, they hoped she could attract ethnic Democrats in the
Northeast U.S. who had abandoned their party for Reagan in
1980.[31][36]
In turn, Mondale accepted the risk that came with her
inexperience.[51]

As Ferraro was the first woman to run on a major party national
ticket in the U.S.,[52] as
well as the first Italian American, her July 19
nomination at the 1984 Democratic
National Convention was one of the most emotional moments of
that gathering, with female delegates appearing joyous and proud at
the historic occasion.[53]
In her acceptance speech, Ferraro said, "The daughter of an
immigrant from Italy has been chosen to run for vice president in
the new land my father came to love."[54]
Convention attendees were in tears during the speech, not just for
its significance for women but for all those who had immigrated to
America.[55]

A flyer
advertised a post-convention Queens Borough Hall rally, for
Ferraro to introduce Mondale to New York City voters.

Ferraro gained immediate, large-scale media attention.[56]
At first, their treatment centered on her novelty as a woman and
her rags-to-riches background story and was
overwhelmingly favorable.[57]
Nevertheless, Ferraro would face many press questions about her
foreign policy inexperience, and responded by discussing her
attention to foreign and national security issues in Congress.[56]
She faced a threshold of proving competence that other high-level
female political figures have had to face, especially those who
might become commander-in-chief; the question
"Are you tough enough?" was often directed to her.[58]Ted Koppel questioned her
closely about nuclear strategy[59]
and during Meet the Press she was asked, "Do
you think that in any way the Soviets might be tempted to try to
take advantage of you simply because you are a woman?"[60]

The choice of Ferraro was viewed as a gamble, and pundits were
uncertain whether it would result in a net gain or loss of votes
for the Mondale campaign.[61] In
the days after the convention, Ferraro proved an effective
campaigner, with a brash and confident style that forcefully
criticized the Reagan administration and sometimes almost
overshadowed Mondale.[31][53][54]
Mondale had been 16 points behind Reagan in polls before the
pick, and after the convention he pulled even for a short time.[50]

But by the last week of July, questions – due initially to
reporting by The New York Times[38]
– were simmering about Ferraro's finances, the finances of her
husband, John
Zaccaro, and their separately filed tax returns.[32]
(While the Mondale campaign had anticipated some questions, the
drawn-out vice-presidential selection process had not fully vetted
her on this aspect.[38][62] This
was also the first time the American media had to deal with a
national candidate's husband.[59])
Ferraro said she would release both their returns within a month,
but maintained she was correct not to have included her husband's
financial holdings on her past annual Congressional disclosure
statements.[32]
Notice of the FEC's past investigation into Ferraro's 1978 campaign
funds also came to light.[32]
Although Ferraro and Zaccaro's finances were often interwoven on
paper,[22]
Zaccaro was of old-world habits, and Ferraro had little knowledge
of his business, his finances, or even how much he was worth.[63]
Zaccaro did not appreciate the intensity of the national exposure
the two were now in and was resistant to releasing his financial
information.[63]
On August 12, Ferraro announced that her husband would not in fact
be releasing his tax returns, on the grounds that to do so would
disadvantage his real estate business and that such a disclosure
was voluntary and not part of election law.[64]
She then quipped, "You people who are married to Italian men, you
know what it's like."[65]

This development dominated television and newspapers;[66]
Ferraro was besieged by questions regarding the finances[67]
as well as criticism for ethnic stereotyping.[65]
As she later wrote, "I had created a monster."[65]
Republicans saw her finances as a "genderless" issue that they
could attack Ferraro with without creating a backlash.[64]
Some Mondale staffers thought Ferraro might have to leave the
ticket.[63]The Philadelphia
Inquirer went even further in its investigations, seeking
to link Zaccaro to organized crime figures, but most publishers
backed off this angle and law enforcement officials did not treat
the allegations with much seriousness.[68] A
week after her previous statement, Ferraro said Zaccaro had changed
his mind and would indeed release his tax records,[67]
which was done on August 20.[69]
The full statements included notice of payment of some $53,000 in
back federal taxes that she owed due to what was described as an
accountant's error.[69]
Ferraro said the statements proved overall that she had nothing to
hide and that there had been no financial wrongdoing.[69]
The disclosures indicated that Ferraro and her husband were worth
nearly $4 million, but much of it was tied up in real estate
rather than being disposable income.[20]

Ferraro's strong performance at an August 22 press conference
covering the final disclosure – where she answered all questions
for two hours – effectively put the issue behind her for the
remainder of the campaign, but significant damage had been
done.[70][71] No
campaign issue during the entire 1984 presidential campaign
received more media attention than Ferraro's finances.[66]
The exposure diminished Ferraro's rising stardom, removed whatever
momentum the Mondale–Ferraro ticket gained out of the convention,
and delayed formation of a coherent message for the fall
campaign.[31][53][70]
As a Catholic, Ferraro also came under fire from some members of
the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic
Church for being pro-choice on abortion;[72] that
issue had her on the defensive during the entire campaign.[73]
Nevertheless, Ferraro resumed her role as a strong campaigner – not
only taking on the traditional running mate role of attacking the
opposition vigorously, but also drawing large crowds witnessing the
historic candidacy and chanting, "Ger-ry! Ger-ry!"[74]
Mondale and Ferraro rarely touched during their appearances
together, to the point that he would not even place his palm on her
back when they stood side-by-side; Ferraro later said this was
because anything more and "people were afraid that it would look
like, 'Oh, my God, they're dating.'"[75]

There was one
vice-presidential debate between Congresswoman Ferraro and Vice
President George H. W. Bush. Held on October
11, the result was proclaimed mostly even by the press and
historians;[54][76] women
voters tended to think Ferraro had won, while men, Bush.[73]
At it, Ferraro criticized Reagan's initial refusal to support an
extension to the Voting Rights Act.[77]
Her experience was questioned at the debate and she was asked how
her three terms in Congress stacked up with Bush's experience.[77]
To one Bush statement she said, "Let me just say first of all, that
I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude
that you have to teach me about foreign policy."[54]
She strongly defended her position on abortion, which earned her
applause and a respectful reply from her opponent.[77]
In the days leading up to the debate, Second Lady of the United
StatesBarbara
Bush had publicly referred to Ferraro as "that
four-million-dollar—I can’t say it, but it rhymes with 'rich'."[78]
Barbara Bush soon apologized.[78]
Ferraro's sex was a steady presence during the campaign; one study
found that 27 percent of newspaper articles written about her
contained gendered language.[79]

Ferraro received one more media jolt on October 18, when the
New York
Post accurately reported that her father had been arrested
for possession of numbers slips in Newburgh shortly before
his death, and inaccurately speculated that something mysterious
had been covered up about that death.[80]
Ferraro's mother had never told her about the arrest,[80]
and the printing of the story led Ferraro to declaim that
Post publisher Rupert Murdoch "does not have the worth
to wipe the dirt under [my mother's] shoes."[81]
Ferraro continued to campaign, by the end traveling more than
Mondale and more than Reagan and Bush combined.[82]

On November 6, Mondale and Ferraro lost the general election in
a landslide. They received only
41 percent of the popular vote compared to Reagan and Bush's
59 percent, and in the Electoral College won
only Mondale's home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.[83]
Ferraro failed to carry her own congressional district, which
always tended to vote Republican in presidential races.[84]
Ferraro's presence on the ticket had little measurable effect
overall.[73]
Reagan captured 55 percent of women voters,[84]
while of the 10 percent of voters who decided based on the
vice-presidential candidates, 54 percent went to
Mondale–Ferraro,[73]
establishing that Ferraro provided a net gain to the Democrats of
0.8 percent.[85]
Reagan's personal appeal and campaign themes of prosperity and
"It's morning again in America" were quite strong,[86] and
political observers generally agree that no combination of
Democrats could have won the election in 1984.[53]
Mondale himself would later reflect that "I knew that I was in for
it with Reagan" and that he had no regrets about choosing
Ferraro.[87]

After the election, the House Ethics
Committee found that Ferraro had technically violated the Ethics in Government Act by
failing to report, or reporting incorrectly, details of her
family's finances, and that she should have reported her husband's
holdings on her Congressional disclosure forms.[88][89]
However, the committee concluded that she had acted without
"deceptive intent", and since she was leaving Congress anyway, no
action against her was taken.[88][89]
Ferraro said, "I consider myself completely vindicated."[89]

First Senate run and
ambassadorship

Ferraro had relinquished her House seat to run for the
vice-presidency. Her new-found fame led to an appearance in a Diet Pepsi commercial in
1985.[3][91]
She published Ferraro: My Story, an account of the
campaign with some of her life leading up to it, in November 1985.
It was a best seller and earned her $1 million.[92]
She also earned over $300,000 by giving speeches.[93]
She founded the Americans Concerned for Tomorrow political action committee,
which focused on getting ten women candidates elected in the 1986 Congressional elections (eight of whom
would be successful).[94]
Despite the one-sided national loss in 1984, Ferraro was still
viewed as someone with a bright political future. Many expected her
to run in the 1986 United States Senate election in New York
against first-term Republican incumbent Al D'Amato,[92]
and during 1985 she did Upstate New York groundwork towards
that end.[95] A
senate candidacy had been her original plan for her career, before
she was named to Mondale's ticket. But in December 1985, she said
she would not run, due to the overhanging cloud from an ongoing U.S. Justice Department probe on her and
her husband's finances stemming from the 1984 campaign
revelations.[92]

Members of Ferraro's family were indeed facing legal issues. Her
husband John
Zaccaro had pleaded guilty in January 1985 to fraudulently
obtain bank financing in a real estate transaction and had been
sentenced to 150 hours of community service.[96] Then
in October 1986, he was indicted on unrelated felony charges
regarding an alleged 1981 bribery of Queens Borough PresidentDonald Manes
concerning a cable television contract.[97] A
full year later, he was acquitted at trial.[98] The
case against him was circumstantial, a key prosecution witness
proved unreliable, and the defense did not have to present its own
testimony.[99][100]
Ferraro said her husband never would have been charged had she not
run for vice president.[100]
Meanwhile, in February 1986, the couple's son John had been
arrested for possession and sale of cocaine.[101]
He was convicted, and in June 1988 sentenced to four months
imprisonment; Ferraro broke down in tears in court relating the
stress the episode had placed on her family.[101]
Ferraro worked on an unpublished book about the conflicting rights
between a free press and being able to have fair trials.[102]
Asked in September 1987 whether she would have accepted the
vice-presidential nomination had she known of all the family
problems that would follow, she said, "More than once I have sat
down and said to myself, oh, God, I wish I had never gone through
with it.... I think the candidacy opened a door for women in
national politics, and I don't regret that for one minute. I'm
proud of that. But I just wish it could have been done in a
different way."[103]

Ferraro remained active in raising money for Democratic
candidates nationwide, especially women candidates.[94]
During the 1988 presidential
election, Ferraro served as vice chair of the party's Victory
Fund.[102]
She also did some commentating for television.[102]
Ferraro was a fellow at the Harvard Institute of
Politics from 1988 to 1992,[26]
teaching in-demand seminars such as "So You Want to be
President?"[94]
She also took care of her mother, who suffered from emphysema for several years
before her death in early 1990.[104]

By October 1991, Ferraro was ready to enter elective politics
again, and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1992 United
States Senate election in New York.[105]
Her opponents were State Attorney General Robert Abrams, Reverand Al Sharpton,
Congressman Robert J. Mrazek, and New York City
Comptroller and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. Abrams was
considered the early front-runner.[105]
The D'Amato campaign feared facing Ferraro the most among these, as
her Italian ancestry, effective debating and stump speech skills,
and her staunch pro-choice views would eat into several of
D'Amato's usual bases of support.[106]
Ferraro emphasized her career as a teacher, prosecutor,
congresswoman, and mother, and talked about how she was tough on
crime.[107]
Ferraro drew renewed attacks during the primary campaign from the
media and her opponents over Zaccaro's finances and business
relationships.[108]
She objected that a male candidate would not receive nearly as much
attention regarding his wife's activities.[108]
Ferraro became the front-runner, capitalizing on her star power
from 1984 and using the campaign attacks against her as an
explicitly feminist rallying point for women voters.[108]
As the primary date neared, her lead began to dwindle under the
charges, and she released additional tax returns from the 1980s to
try to defray the attacks.[93]
Holtzman ran a negative ad accusing Ferraro and Zaccaro of
taking more than $300,000 in rent in the 1980s from a pornographer
with purported ties to organized crime.[109] The
final debates were nasty, and Holtzman in particular constantly
attacked Ferraro's integrity and finances.[110][111]
In an unusual election-eve television broadcast, Ferraro talked
about "the ethnic slur that I am somehow or other connected to
organized crime. There's lots of innuendo but no proof. However, it
is made plausible because of the fact that I am an
Italian-American. This tactic comes from the poisoned well of fear
and stereotype ..."[112] On
the September 15, 1992 primary, Abrams edged out Ferraro by less
than percentage point, winning 37 percent of the vote to
36 percent.[111]
Ferraro did not concede she had lost for two weeks.[113]

Abrams spent much of the remainder of the campaign trying to get
Ferraro's endorsement.[114]
Ferraro, enraged and bitter after the nature of the primary,[110][113]
ignored Abrams and accepted Bill Clinton's request to campaign for his presidential
bid instead.[115] She
was eventually persuaded by state party leaders into giving an
unenthusiastic endorsement with just three days to go before the
general election, in exchange for an apology by Abrams for the tone
of the primary.[114]
D'Amato won the election by a very narrow margin.[110]
The Ferraro-Holtzman fighting of the campaign was viewed as a
disaster by many feminists,[116] but
overall the 1992 U.S. Senate
elections saw so many victories that it became known as the "Year of the
Woman".

Following the primary loss, Ferraro became managing partner in
the New York office of Keck, Mahin & Cate, a
Chicago-based law firm.[117][118]
There she organized the office and spoke with clients, but did not
actively practice law and left before the firm fell into
difficulties.[118]
Ferraro's second book, a collection of her speeches, was titled
Changing History: Women, Power and Politics and was
published in 1993.[119]

President Clinton appointed Ferraro as a member of the United
States delegation to United Nations
Commission on Human Rights in January 1993.[120] She
attended the June 1993 World Conference on Human
Rights in Vienna as the
alternate U.S. delegate.[121]
Then in October 1993, Clinton promoted her to be head of the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights delegation, with the rank of United States Ambassador, saying that
Ferraro had been "a highly effective voice for the human rights of
women around the world."[122] The
Clinton administration named Ferraro vice-chair of the U.S.
delegation to the landmark September 1995 Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing; in
this role she picked a strong team of experts in human rights
issues to serve with her.[123]
During her stint on the commission, it for the first time condemned
anti-Semitism as a human rights
violation,[124]
and also for the first time prevented China from blocking a motion criticizing its human
rights record.[125]
Regarding a previous China motion that had failed, Ferraro had told
the commission, "Let us do what we were sent here to do – decide
important questions of human rights on their merits, not avoid
them."[124]
Ferraro held the U.N. position into 1996.[10]

Commentator and second
Senate run

In February 1996, Ferraro joined the high-visibility CNN political talk show Crossfire,[126] as
the co-host representing the "from the left" vantage. She kept her
brassy, rapid-fire speech and New York accent
intact, and her trial experience from her prosecutor days was a
good fit for the program's format.[127]
She sparred effectively with "from the right" co-host Pat Buchanan,[127]
for whom she developed a personal liking.[128] The
show stayed strong in ratings for CNN,[129]
and the job was lucrative.[91][130]
She welcomed how the role "keeps me visible [and] keeps me
extremely well informed on the issues."[127]

At the start of 1998, Ferraro left Crossfire and ran
for the Democratic nomination again in the 1998 United
States Senate election in New York.[129]
The other candidates were Congressman Charles Schumer and
New York City Public
AdvocateMark J.
Green.[131]
She had done no fundraising, out of fear of conflict of interest
with her Crossfire job, but was nonetheless immediately
perceived as the front-runner.[131]
Indeed, December and January polls had her 25 percentage
points ahead of Green in the race and even further ahead of
Schumer.[91][132]
Unlike the previous campaigns, her family finances never became an
issue.[91]
However, she lost ground during the summer, with Schumer catching
up in the polls by early August and then soon passing her.[133]
Schumer, a tireless fundraiser, outspent her by a five-to-one
margin, and Ferraro failed to establish a political image current
with the times.[91][134] In
the September 15, 1998 primary, she was beaten soundly by Schumer
by a 51 percent to 26 percent margin.[91]
Unlike 1992, the contest was not divisive, and Ferraro and
third-place finisher Green endorsed Schumer at a unity breakfast
the following day.[135]
Schumer would go on to decisively unseat D'Amato in the general
election.

The 1998 primary defeat brought an end to Ferraro's political
career. The New York Times wrote at the
time: "If Ms. Ferraro's rise was meteoric, her political career's
denouement was protracted, often agonizing and, at first glance,
baffling."[91]
She still retained admirers, though. Anita
Perez Ferguson, president of the National Women's
Political Caucus, noted that female New York political figures
in the past had been reluctant to enter the states's notoriously
fierce primary races, and said: "This woman has probably been more
of an opinion maker than most people sitting for six terms straight
in the House of Representatives or Senate. Her attempts, and even
her losses, have accomplished far beyond what others have
accomplished by winning."[91]

Business
career

Framing a Life: A Family Memoir was published by
Ferraro in November 1998. It depicts the life story of her mother
and immigrant grandmother; it also portrays the rest of her family,
and is a memoir of her early life, but includes relatively little
about her political career.[136]

Ferraro had felt unusually tired at the end of her senate
campaign.[137]
In November 1998, she was diagnosed with multiple
myeloma, a form of cancer where plasma cells secrete abnormal
antibodies known as Bence-Jones proteins.[138]
She did not publicly disclose the illness until June 2001, when she
went to Washington to successfully press in Congressional hearings
for passage of the Hematological
Cancer Research Investment and Education Act.[138]
A portion of the Act created the Geraldine Ferraro Cancer Education
Program, which directs the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
to establish an education program for patients of blood cancers and
the general public.[139]
Ferraro became a frequent speaker on the disease,[140]
and an avid supporter and honorary board member of the Multiple Myeloma
Research Foundation.[138]
Though initially given only three to five years to live, by virtue
of several new drug therapies and a bone marrow transplant,[138]
she has beaten the disease's Stage 1 survival mean of
62 months by a factor of two.[141]
She is not in remission, but
the disease is managed through continually adjusting her
treatments.[137]

In January 2000, Ferraro and Lynn Martin – a former Republican
Congresswoman and U.S. Secretary
of Labor who had played Ferraro in George H.W. Bush's debate
preparations in 1984[145]
– co-founded, and served as co-presidents of, G&L Strategies, a
management consulting firm underneath Weber McGinn.[146] Its
goal was to advise corporations on how to develop more women
leaders and make their workplaces more amenable to female
employees.[145]
G&L Strategies subsequently became part of Golin Harris
International.[147]
In June 2003, Ferraro was made executive vice president and
managing director of the public affairs practice of the Global
Consulting Group,[147]
an international investor relations and corporate communications
component of Huntsworth. There she worked with
corporations, non-profit organizations, state governments and
political figures.[148]
She continues there as a senior advisor working about two days a
month.[138]

Ferraro became a principal in the government relations practice
of the Blank Rome law
firm in February 2007, working both in New York and Washington[148][149]
about two days a week in their lobbying and communications
activities.[138]
As she passed the age of 70, she was thankful for still being
alive, and said “This is about as retired as I get, which is part
time,”[138]
and that if she fully retired, she would "go nuts".[149]

Ferraro has been a member of the board of directors of Goodrich
Petroleum since August 2003.[150]
She was also a board member for New York Bancorp
in the 1990s.[130]

After living for many years in Forest Hills Gardens,
Queens, she and her husband moved to Manhattan in 2002.[127][149][160] She
republished Ferraro: My Story in 2004, with a postscript
summarizing her life in the twenty years since the campaign.[161]

Ferraro inserted herself into the heat via a March 2008
interview with the small California newspaper Daily Breeze in
which she said: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this
position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in
this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the
country is caught up in the concept."[163][165][166]
Ferraro justified the statements by referring to her own run for
vice president, saying that: "I was talking about historic
candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go
back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just
talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard
Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been
chosen as a vice-presidential candidate. It had nothing to do with
my qualification."[163]
Her comments drew criticism and charges of racism from many
supporters of Obama[167] and
Obama called them "patently absurd".[164]
Clinton publicly expressed disagreement with Ferraro's remarks,
while Ferraro vehemently denied she was a racist.[163]
Again speaking to the Breeze, Ferraro responded to the
attacks by saying: "I really think they're attacking me because I'm
white. How's that?"[164][168]
Ferraro resigned from Clinton's finance committee on March 12,
2008, two days after the firestorm began, saying that she didn't
want the Obama camp to use her comments to hurt Clinton's
campaign.[169]

Ferraro continued to engage the issue and criticize the Obama
campaign via her position as a Fox News Channel contributor.[170][171][172]
By early April, Ferraro said people were deluging her with negative
comments and trying to get her removed from one of the boards she
was on: "This has been the worst three weeks of my life."[172]
Ferraro stated in mid-May 2008 that Clinton had "raised this whole
woman candidate thing to a whole different level than when I
ran".[173]
She thought Obama had behaved in a sexist manner and that she might not vote for
him.[173]

During September 2008, Ferraro gained attention yet again after
the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Republican
vice-presidential nominee, the first such major party bid for a
woman since her own in 1984.[174][175][176]
In reaction, Ferraro said, "It's great to be the first, but I don't
want to be the only. And so now it is wonderful to see a woman on a
national ticket."[90]
Ferraro speculated that the pick might win Republican presidential
nominee John McCain
the election,[177] but
said that she was supporting Obama now due to his running mate
selection of Joe Biden
having resolved her concerns about Obama's lack of experience in
certain areas.[174][178]
Ferraro criticized the media's scrunity of Palin's background and
family as gender-based and saw parallels with how she was treated
by the media during her own run;[174][179] a
University of Alabama study also
found that media framing of Ferraro and Palin
was similar and often revolved around their nominations being
political gambles.[180] A
Newsweek cover
story detected a change in how women voters responded to a female
vice presidential candidate from Ferraro's time to Palin's, but
Ferraro correctly predicted that the bounce that McCain received
from the Palin pick would dissipate.[175]
In a friendly joint retrospective of her 1984 debate with George H.
W. Bush, Ferraro said she had had more national issues experience
in 1984 than Palin did now, but that it was important that Palin
make a good showing in her vice
presidential debate so that "little girls [could] see someone
there who can stand toe to toe with [Biden]."[176]
McCain and Palin ended up losing, but regardless of the 1984 or
2008 election result, Ferraro said that "Every time a woman runs,
women win."[175]

During her time in Congress, Ferraro received numerous awards
from local organizations in Queens.[3]

In 2007, Ferraro received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Sons of Italy
Foundation.[183] In
2008, Ferraro was the initial recipient of the annual Trailblazer
Award from the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations.[184]

What We Learned the Hard Way - What We Learned the Hard Way; Two trailblazers recall their White House runs, and how America has changed since then.(Cover story) | Article from Newsweek | HighBeam Research